Your Own Domain and Hosting

Any product or service that requires storage or access on the internet will use the services of a web hosting company to do this. The service they provide is normally chargeable, for obvious reasons but it is possible for personal websites to be hosted for free. What happens is a hosting company allows another person or company to have (either paid or for free) a certain amount of space on a device called a server where other people can then view whatever you want them to, including a website.

Many types exist, some provide free hosting but with these types you pay the price of having restricted facilities that usually allow the likes of blogs, email and basic websites to be accessed. When a person realizes they want to host additional sites and store other digital products, they may find that the range of facilities for unpaid web hosting plans is too limited. Hosting packages vary enormously and do not rely purely on the storage capacity available so the decision should be made relative to your particular needs.


In the early days you may be quite happy to have your files on a server which is shared by many others while you try their hosting services. This will enable you to see if you have chosen a very good company; then change to a dedicated server with your company when you're comfortable with their services. A web hosting plan is no good unless you have a registered domain to use, then you can use this in conjunction with the storage space to save your files, website etc. A file is anything that is stored on the server and can include images, documents, programs, video or audio files, in fact anything that can be stored digitally; prices for storage continue to fall so limits are constantly rising.


Another advantage of web hosting and your own domain name is that email addresses will include your own domain name and not that of those free providers such as Google, Yahoo and MSN to name a few of the thousands of providers whose services can be used. Such e-mail addresses are very important, especially if you're truly serious in business as they provide you with a level of credibility that free email addresses never can. The more information that is transferred from your website over the internet, the more bandwidth is used so it is important if you have a great deal of information stored to ensure you have a hosting package that will easily cater for your bandwidth usage.


If you have a busy website and you have a low bandwidth allocation then there will be times when potential visitors will be disappointed as they will not be able to access your site until the allocation has been re-set. Of course this won't matter if you only have a basic website but as soon as you start adding large images, audio tracks, video footage and other big files, your bandwidth will be used up very quickly. Although it is possible for a person to use their own PC as a host, there are many security dangers associated with this so using a dedicated web hosting company is preferable.